Review: Rann / Ishqiya

The ever-tightening web of news-channel foul play forms the focus of an engrossing melodrama. Plus, a wickedly entertaining desi-Western that pulls its punches.

JAN 31, 2010 – RAM GOPAL VARMA’S RANN OPENS with the sun glowering on a sweltering metropolis. Inside the homes, however, the heat emanates from television, from news channels aboil with sensation mongering (underscored by shivering strings and pounding percussion more suited to the climactic battle in Macbeth). Within a short span, we are thrown amidst a battalion on the rims of the TV-news business – the patriarchal anchor Vijay Malik (Amitabh Bachchan), his smarmy competitor Amrish (Mohnish Bahl), Vijay’s son Jai (Sudeep), Vijay’s son-in-law Naveen (Rajat Kapoor), callow reporter Purab (Riteish Deshmukh), the buffoonish journalist Anand (Rajpal Yadav), go-getting news executive Nalini (Suchitra Krishnamoorthy), and the barbarous politician Mohan Pandey (Paresh Rawal), the vermilion patch on whose forehead resembles a victorious smear of blood after vanquishing a series of opponents. And the first words out of these mouths are invariably overarching opinions on media – about its nature and function, about how news isn’t a communal service anymore but a cutthroat business predicated on TRPs.

As such, some fifteen minutes into the film, my worst fears seemed to crystallise. The moralistic subject matter and the message-ripe promos appeared to indicate fodder more appropriate to the Madhur Bhandarkar stables, which specialise in breeding genetically dumbed-down strains of socially relevant issues that are eventually led to multiplex abattoirs for slaughter. (And indeed, Bhandarkar’s inexplicably feted Page 3 touched on several topics dear to Rann.) Why, I wondered, would a far superior filmmaker like Varma be interested in this past-sell-date material, especially since he’s the last person you’d expect to take up cudgels for any cause? Soon, however, there are hints that this isn’t a story about media so much as one that skirts around it. In a confessional address towards the end, a beleaguered Vijay Malik drones about the misuse of the medium, and I thought the medium he was alluding to was The Media – but turns out he was only referring to India 24×7, his own channel. The milieu does result in pat Bhandarkar-like abstractions, but underneath the unmasking of a public institution, this is a very personal tale.

To say that Rann is about media would be to label The Godfather as being about gangsters – whereas the latter is simply about people (first), who happen to be gangsters (second). And in order to showcase these people in a mythic light, Varma, as he did in Sarkar, leans towards the Godfather template. He restages the dinner-table scene from Sarkar. (Bachchan is still the patriarch at the head of the table, surrounded by an extended family mired in tensions.) A birthday party for Vijay Malik is shaped like the wedding that opened the earlier film, with friends and foes alike showing up to extend wishes, and amidst these celebrations, Jai introduces his girlfriend (Yasmine, played by Neetu Chandra) to his parents. At the very outset, Purab comes off like the boy-scout Michael, the unlikely savior of an empire, just as Naveen appears to take his cues from the traitorous Carlo (another son-in-law who never fully belonged to either the family or the Family). Like the Godfather who refused to countenance lucrative drug dealing, Vijay too is a dinosaur who lives by certain principles, unwilling to truckle down before equally lucrative TRPs.

These parallels could be inadvertent, but there’s nothing indeliberate about Varma’s portrayal of media men as corporate gangsters, and that’s when I saw what could have interested him – the opportunity for another mythical meditation on men at work. (It’s no accident that a song towards the end invokes the chakravyuh, and chants of yada yada hi dharmasya permeate the background.) Regardless of the quality of his recent output, Varma is an entirely necessary presence in our cinematic landscape if only because of his preoccupation with the workplace, a domain traditionally considered masculine, and a far shout from others who’d rather deal with home and heart, those traditionally feminine spaces. Rann is a muscular throwback to the archetypal masala movie (and how fitting that Bachchan, once again, returns as Vijay!) – an update of the David-Goliath template (think Arjun), with Purab invested with the irony of investigating the very men given the job of investigating the wrongs around them.

And yet, this ancient myth is thawed from its amber trappings and hauled to the modern day. The good guys are a distant presence in the first half, and even later, they must share space with their opponents, who dominate the screen. (Bachchan, therefore, is necessarily subdued amidst a spate of attention-grabbing performances, carrying the cross of being a national monument, “poore desh ka maseeha.” He’s attired in stuffy suits that underline his outdatedness in relation to Amrish, who lords over his empire in jeans and sneakers.) Even the final victory of good over evil is Pyrrhic, obtained over great personal loss, and the villains aren’t quite brought to book in a fashion that would satisfy the strictures of the time-honoured black-and-white masala melodrama – their fate is a question mark hovering over our future. This is a morality tale with a conclusion that verges on the amoral.

Varma’s accomplishment in Rann is to transform an entirely predictable outline into an engrossing experience. There are several small moments to savour – Purab being handed a statuette of Ganesha by his girlfriend (Gul Panag) so he won’t be alone in his first day at work, a sheepish Jai lying to his mother that his Muslim girlfriend’s nickname (Yash) is short for Yashodha (instead of Yasmine), or Purab delighting in a word of praise from Vijay Malik, whom he hero-worships. There’s also this director’s unique approach to cinematography, which demolishes traditional concepts of an actor’s all-encompassing “body language” in favour of isolating close-ups of body parts in order to highlight emotion – the eyes of a concerned mother framed atop a television set, or the nervous hands of a son playing with a cigarette lighter. Varma is possibly the only filmmaker who’s as respectful of his environment as of his actors – even walls and furniture help to colour the conflicts of the characters. I don’t know that we want (or need) our films to poke our jaded selves into shocked action, but if it has to be done, this is the way to do it – with fervour and flamboyance. Madhur Bhandarkar would do well to look and learn.

THERE’S NO IMAGE, ONLY SOUND, at the beginning of Abhishek Chaubey’s Ishqiya, as Rekha Bhardwaj, in her inimitably tossed-off style, hums Ab mujhe koi intezaar kahan. A few phrases later, the black screen begins to brighten, and our eyes descend on Krishna (Vidya Balan) – a Reclining Venus (even if fully clad), a vision that’s woman from top to toe, from the slightest curve of breast to the generous swell of hips to the endless taper of legs. Much later in the film, when Khalujaan (Naseeruddin Shah) exclaims that Krishna is a frustrating amalgam of pari and tawaif, it’s this Madonna-whore picture that pops into mind, at once chaste and carnal, and lit by the afterglow of lovemaking. It wouldn’t come as a revelation if Chaubey intended the mobile suspended from a car’s rear-view mirror – the figure is of Eve, the fig-leaf Temptress – as an homage to Krishna, hinting at the ways she will tempt both Khalujaan and Babban (Arshad Warsi).

These initial frames are about physical love, though Ishqiya is about love in all its shapes and forms, with its power to reduce grown-ups to slobbering infants (evinced in the lyrics of the marvellous Dil to bachcha hai ji, composed by Vishal Bhardwaj). There’s the scampish, fraternal (or, as some would have us believe, homoerotic) Jai-Veeru brand of love between Khalujaan and Babban. (Shah and Warsi play wonderfully off each other, suggesting a sustained history of jolly disreputability.) There’s the unilateral attraction smouldering between Khalujaan and Krishna. There’s the primal, need-fulfilling love that leads to Krishna cutting Babban’s thumb and instantly sucking on it. (To no one’s surprise, they subsequently tumble into bed.) There’s the nostalgic love that Khalujaan harbours for a mysterious woman from the past, whose sepia-tinted photograph rests in his wallet.

Finally, there’s the bordering-on-crazy love symbolised by a Taj Mahal locket, the ceaseless yearning for a lover beyond the grave – the sort of love that’s sought in the folds of a blanket of an unmade bed in the lover’s absence, the type of love that necessitates the pasting of press clippings (reporting the lover’s death) on the makeshift shrine of one’s wall, the kind of love so explosive that it (literally) scorches the skin. Ishqiya is yet another desi Western from (producer) Bhardwaj’s stable – it’s set in the sand-brushed bylanes of Gorakhpur – and Krishna is a loose updating of the Claudia Cardinale character from Once Upon a Time in the West, the widow who wills herself to bed with strangers in order to get at what’s important. There’s a degree of crafty craziness needed to embody Krishna, and I’m not sure Vidya Balan has it. Hers is a refined, soothing presence that comes with delicate line readings, and though she looks the part and acts the part, we don’t hear the part when she opens her mouth. (She renders Badi dheere jali raina, a howl from the heart if there ever was one, with expressions more appropriate to a tranquil bhajan.) The film hinges on a good performer trapped in an ill-suited role.

The other aspect that drags down Ishqiya is its over-reliance on colour. In order to differentiate Khalujaan from Babban, Chaubey usefully employs Hindi film music from an older era. Khalujaan sways to Tumhein dekhti hoon to lagta hai from Tumhare Liye – he knows that the composer is Jaidev, and he nods appreciatively at “Lata bai’s” singing. And in stark contrast to this streetside connoisseur is the earthy Babban, who shakes his hips to Dhanno ki aankhon mein in a whorehouse. (Trust a Vishal Bhardwaj production to tip a hat to Gulzar!) But the effect is that of overkill when Chaubey introduces Khalujaan and Babban dancing drunk to Ajeeb dastaan hai yeh, when Babban and Krishna get naughty with Dekha to tujhe yaar dil mein baji guitar, and when a kinky seduction scene is underscored by Aa jaane jaan from Inteqaam. Chaubey is so much in love – yes, he too cannot escape his film’s overriding emotion – with his detours into the uncharted and the forbidden (lip-locks, cusswords, an overdetermined strain of the eccentric) that there are times the loosely shaped Ishqiya comes close to being all colour and flavour and little else.

Yes, these are colours and flavours we do not see or smell in the spit-shined urban multiplex movie, but how far in the other direction will we travel before beginning to demand that a film have more to it than just these colours and flavours? On a basic level, Ishqiya is extremely entertaining, and yet, it’s hard to shake off the suspicion that it could have been so much more given its initial promise about a refreshingly adult approach to love, an emotion that has been infantilised by most of our filmmakers. Taken as what it is, however, this is an impressive first feature. Chaubey skillfully outlines a serious plot – a crazy quilt patched together from kidnappings, caste wars, arms trading and unresolved love triangles – with featherlight brushstrokes, and he orchestrates stretches featuring wonderful characters (the little boy who joins the army, the old woman with a torch) and writing, with lines so steeped in local hues that they come off as coarse poetry. (“Aaj kal nange hain ke burqe mein?” is how Babban enquires if someone is free or in prison.) I was especially taken by the offhand development where Khalujaan drops his cell phone in a melee and is unable to contact Babban and Krishna, which results in the latter discovering, in each other, hints of possible compatibility. Love can spring from the strangest of circumstances, Chaubey says, and we nod in helpless recognition.

For me, the highlights of Ishqiya were the dialogues and, of course, dil to bachcha hai ji. What lyrics! And so wonderful captured on screen!

Although the film is based in East UP, I was hoping for a lot more of the sing-song accent that I love. It would have been good if Vidya Balan had put more emphasis on the accent. That would have contrasted very well with Babban’s accent, which was a curious mix of West UP and Bhopali accents.

“Yes, these are colours and flavours we do not see or smell in the spit-shined urban multiplex movie, but how far in the other direction will we travel before beginning to demand that a film have more to it than just these colours and flavours? ”

As for me – take me all the way buddy , take me all the way. What i am constantly frustrated by is the unavailability of these films outside India so you are forced to watch the “clean, scrubbed multiplex India” that i for one can simply not relate to.

“There’s also this director’s unique approach to cinematography, which demolishes traditional concepts of an actor’s all-encompassing “body language” in favour of isolating close-ups of body parts in order to highlight emotion – the eyes of a concerned mother framed atop a television set, or the nervous hands of a son playing with a cigarette lighter. Varma is possibly the only filmmaker who’s as respectful of his environment as of his actors”

from the rediff review:

“My grouse doesn’t stop here. The close-ups! There are SO many of them. Fine, so our man loves to go macro on his protagonists but does he really have to make them feel like that annoying housefly on your nose? I am quite sure a long shot is as necessary as Ramu’s need to focus on Big B’s biting lips, Paresh Rawal’s creepy wince and Sudeep’s fidgety fingers. ”

How one man’s treasure can be someone else’s trash. This is what makes reviews interesting for me on another level 🙂

Aditya Pant: Reg. “What lyrics!” As if this needed to be said, given who wrote them 😉 Other than the accent part, did Vidya Balan work for you though?

vijay: Well, Western as in frontier-type territory, gunslingers and so on. Within the genre, there are spoof Westerns (Blazing Saddles), comic Westerns (Cat Ballou), musical Westerns (Annie Get Your Gun) and noir Westerns (Winchester 73). This seemed to me like a ‘desi’ Western. It’s a loose indication of genre tropes, as in if a Western were made today in this country, it might look like this.

I’m really surprised you think Vidya wore her character loosely. I thought it was such a perfect fit. In the beginning, the chaste Hindi (while making rotis for Varma) was jarring, but soon she made good of it.

Reg: “Hers is a refined, soothing presence that comes with delicate line readings, and though she looks the part and acts the part, we don’t hear the part when she opens her mouth.”

Usually Bollywood’s UP or non-urban or working-class women i.e. anyone who’s not a diva, are luminous princesses (Kareena Kapoor in Omkaara) or paan-chewing crass spitfires. It was refreshing to see Vidya do a regular rural woman in love in a crazy situation. She didn’t walk around with a gun, but knew how to use it when needed. She could ask “chai banaoon?” as easily as she could call someone “chutiya sulphate” (Where does this word come from anyway?). She didn’t have to prove in every scene that she was non-urban, she just was.
My point is, her craftiness was so real it didn’t need theatrics. She could be standing next to you in a village post office and you wouldn’t know what was going on behind that tranquil face. And that’s the quiet and refreshing unpredictability she’s able to portray like no other.
I wonder if you were disappointed because you had a character in mind based on the trailers that overly emphasised the sexual and/or crass side of the character.

The fact that Vidya’s physical sensuousness and the shocking nature of her acts and words were juxtaposed with a “refined, soothing presence” further reinforced the often frustrating contradictions in her character and the evocation of two very different fantasies in the men who want her. Her performance worked completely for me – if a more obvious actress had been chosen for the role, it would have veered too close to stereotype; Vidya’s silken performance adds to the unpredictability of the volatile world of the film, IMO.

Really, Madhur Bhandarkar needs to learn. When Rgv directs like RGV, few things can match up. Though I really think that the film has got the watermark of Sarkar. Except that Kay Kay was better than Sudeep and Ritesh was more expressive than Abhishek.
And thanks for giving words to my feelings after watching ishqiya. I was really looking forward to your review after watching the two movies and must say, was not disappointed.

Ishqiya is an excellent film. It has wonderful performances, great scenes and one-liners as well as a rustic setting and language that makes you sit up and listen. This is a film with a thumping libido that has gone around the village twice while other modern films still seem to be suckling at their mothers’ teats.

It is all this and more until… it decides it has to tell a story. Right before the intermission the plot begins a steady decline into been-there-done-that-dom with unnecessary characters, twists and double crosses. It decides that the great Naseerudin Shah and Arshad Warsi are not interesting enough and travels down avenues in the dark, only to trip and stumble to a overwrought climax.

I must concede that this is after all a debut by Chaubey and at least in the first half, he does better than could be expected, channeling a desi Coen-esque caper that’s full of greed, lust and dirty tongues. He creates wonderful scenes underlined by mundane activities like chopping firewood and peeling garlic; scenes where you aren’t really sure who’s who and what’s what. But by the end you know exactly what’s what and that’s why this picture is so frustrating – it descends from misdirection and nuance to exposition and chaos.

It’s akin to falling in love during what’s meant to be one-night stand – it’s obviously not mean to last.

well to be honest, rann is a desperate bid by RGV to restore his fire which was lost during and after the making of RGV ka Aag… its very very predictable with a weak script & some of the integral pluses which you expect to see from an RGV film are there thanfully but it all stops there.. this man should realize that the people have realized that he is different from masala film maker and should attempt more convincing well researched scripts instead of such superficial ones… and the big B yes we all know he is the greatest actor & may be has done enough already to win the best actor in critics role for this film but the reasons given for he getting convinced by his son first and the disciple next are so very juvenile…

you have made a good stride RGV to come out of the aag mess, but you need to do a lot better & do not drift to the plots or sub plots of god father for the sake of ur godfather (the audience who accepted you as director who can do things refreshingly different from masala directors)… well five or six years ago this film would have been declared as a sensational hit, but now its just an average flick but well it doesn’t bore you surely…

Niranjan: Didn’t do a review of Harishchandrachi Factory, but caught it in Goa and wrote a blurb here.

Rohini/Saleheen: What can I say! I saw the effort and she didn’t quite fit in. There was a daintiness to her that somehow removed her from the role for me. She needed to be a beauty with balls, and all I got was the beauty part.

Just Another Film Buff: Yeah, curry western. But to my mind, that somehow goes with films like Sholay, that actually emulate Westerns. It’s a slim distinction, I know…

oh and (vishal) bharadwaj, quintein tarantino neither makes big money and nor is he well liked in france. he’s to france what lars von trier is to america. so can we see less of tarantino in your films pl?

Exactly, bhardwaj hasn’t bettered maqbool yetam yet, the onboarding of bolly stars seems to have opened him to sycophantic appreciation from regular bolly buffs. Refresh me but did irfan khan do a film with vb after maqbool?hmm…

Rohini, appreciate your comment. It seems directors have to pander to existinf bolly stereotypes of any region than present it as he knows it. Hence kareena kappor’s half job in omkara is great Kareena must be the most over rated bolly actress ever – considering she has her sister for competition that’s quite an achievement

on Rann, i persistently got the feeling that this was not RGV behind the camera. The film seemed really superficial and the story-telling too linear compared to some of his more hard-hitting stuff (satya, company, even D for that matter). Any idea whether he actually did direct the movie? Agree though that this may be the way madhur bhandarkar shd approach his movies instead of making them moralistic over-the-top melodrama. Personally, if this is RGV himself the director and not a shadow of him, I wd be very disappointed. Not that liked his recent attempts at movie-making but at least he used to be different. anyway.
ishqiya i quite liked it though – esp the first half was really cool, for someone who grew up in taht part of india (a welcome change from the laloo stereotype). the music too was brilliant, esp. the dil to bachha hai ji, so maybe we shd wish for more vishal bharadwaj movies just for his music (and those lyrics!). as a first movie quite promising i thought – although i have to agree with you taht the director seemed to put in all the gimmicks (tht you mentioned) in the first movie itself. but somehow, i didnt get teh same feelign tht tehy were out of place (except for the ** sulphate tht vidya balan used, which seemed odd coming from her).

I liked Ishqiya. Maybe only because it wasn’t your usual Bollywood fare. Maybe because reminded me of Omkara, Kaminey or Manorama. Maybe because of the language the people speak. I certainly enjoyed it though.

The one “critical” complaint I have is that even though it’s set in the heartland, some of it seemed to have been translated – the “kya mai kutiya hoon” dialog, the bondage/S&M scene. And the fact that no actress seems to be able to get the UP/Bihar accent right (Shool, Gangajal etc)

1. I didn’t think Khalu’s attraction for Krishna was smouldering at all. Khalu seemed to me to be more the type of aashiq who would quote poetry to his lady love rather than grab her and plant one on her – which is actually much more Krishna’s speed as we saw from her goings on with Babban. That scene where he’s drunk and she comes and giggles like a little girl like she hadn’t just pulled a gun on him – and the way he freezes at her touch and his constant backpeddling with the flirtation every time she looks as though she might be on the verge of responding…. in another time and place, Khalu might have been a troubadour.

2. I don’t think Ishqiya was meant to be a deeper film. It’s obviously not a glitzy Bolly production, but like Kaminey before this, it’s a variation on a commercial theme.

Amrita: “smouldering” as in slow-burning (from his side). Dictionary definitions include “1. To burn with little smoke and no flame. 2. To exist in a suppressed state” Disagree? 🙂

“in another time and place, Khalu might have been a troubadour” – I like this extrapolation. As my English teacher would write, “V. Good.” 🙂

About it being a deeper film, I think it could have gone that way had they made this about love, because that was certainly there to be explored. But I think (intentionally or otherwise), this caught stuck between being a plot-based film and a character-based one, with half-hearted stabs at noir in a setting that’s clearly a Western. If all these elements had been resolved better, it might have been a really “deep” film.

Well, “burn with little smoke and no flame” is a good description yes. 😀 I actually wondered if Khalu was impotent. The way it was structured, with Babban being his polar opposite and humping everything in sight – even if Khalu wasn’t written as such, I think Naseer played him thus. God, I love Naseer! AB fans can clutch the scenery chewing to their bosoms.

Re: deeper meanings – you’re on to something about Ishqiya not owning up to its Western roots. I don’t know a genre more suited to philosophizing while entertaining. But I think VB & Co. are actively on the hunt for a commercial adult formula that would bring in the moolah. Or else, VB is on a genre writing kick with Kaminey and this one. All writers should have problems like his!

um hollywood doesn’t do age, bollywood does. everyone in hollywood has done intergenerational relationships(even in films, they have positive depictions of 65 year old men doing 20 year old women).

In tamil and hindi cinema, however, age is never acknowledged for heroes (when, say a 70 year old rajinikanth is romancing a 24 year old shriya saran) but when it IS(like in naseer’s case in ishkiya), the charecters are never given the power to make a sexual advance at a younger woman unless it be a sleezy one.Simply the grammar of indian cinema.

but I recognise that your quip was merely a parthian shot ,and you didn’t really mean for it to be taken or addressed seriously.

@ Ramesh – aww, thanks for knowing what I meant better than I did. All these years on the internet and it’s still SUCH a novelty when a man wants me to shut up and says he knows my business better than I do! I look forward to you completing the trifecta in your next post. (Don’t worry if you don’t know what trifecta I’m talking about – your kind never do, but I assure you, you will hit it!)

Meanwhile, much as I hesitate to counter your all-knowing, all-encompassing wisdom, perhaps you could spare a moment of time from better educating me on what I mean and consider the following:

1. This is a movie written by Vishal Bhardwaj who’s been playing with the “grammar of [Hindi[ cinema” for a while now.

2. The grammar of Indian cinema is not a static entity. It is constantly evolving.

3. There is a difference between Bollywood and Hindi cinema much as people like to lump it together in one category and despite its overlap. Ishqiya is Hindi cinema, not Bollywood.

4. The next time you put out a blanket statement like “old people dont jump younger girls if this is to be romance. she should do the hard work and it turned out she din’t have to work very hard to get laid.” maybe you should add the qualifiers where necessary? Some of us aren’t given to extrapolating meaning outside the text as a matter of basic etiquette. You probably missed that childhood lesson coz you were busy being suckled by wolves on top of Mt. Olympus. Perfectly understandable.

ishqiya and vidya balan- yes, and no. she did the subtle seductress/schemer bit really well, but yes, the lip-synching for the “bhajan “sucked, and her accent was occasionally a tad too refined for her role. and i thought mushtaq’s wife sounded suspiciously like vidya balan herself- in fact i was expecting some plot twist in that direction right uptil the very end.

loved the film totally though. the old woman who wanders in and out of the house/film was quite interestingly symbolic, methought. she gets the two conmen to the house as “krishna’s mehmaan”, her presence in the house hardly acts as a deterrent to the carryings-on of the good widow, and she hands krishna the torch at the end. some sort of metaphor for krishna’s shrivelled former self as the good wife, perhaps?

and the caste politics in the film- wouldn’t vidyadhar verma be an upper caste? in which case, how come the sena accepts his role in their movement, even as a gun-runner, so easily? or is he an intermediate caste, and therefore still acceptable to both? hmm, hegemony- the opressor seeming to help the opressed, and still exploiting them for his own ends.

Amrita, youre welcome.Im glad i stood still long enough for you to paint that target on my back and use me for feminist target practice. you must have a lot of practice doing this because that was SMOOTHLY DONE.

to unhijack the topic back from the feminist agenda of blaming patriarcal me for all the people that raped women, yes i DO presume to understand what you said. my arrogant presumption comes from a certain loophole in the english language that stipulates, rather unwaveringly, im afraid, that words have commonly understood meanings(gasp! can it be that you lose ownership of the meaning to the world once you have said something?) which i am allowed to “presume”. after all a one line dismissal is hardly an attempt to engage…

coming to ‘vishal bharadwaj being no ordinary filmmmaker” sorry to not drink the cool aid, but vb is BORINGLY CONVENTIONAL when it comes to many bollywood(gasp can it be! bollywood IS indian cinema too!) conventions of storrytelling and scripting. ishkiya(boring film) is no exception.

next, text/extrapolation…rich coming from someone who just extrapolated a feminist chargesheet of historical patriarchal crimes against me from my text above, but i guess i understand, we are forgiving of our own sins much more than we are of the patriarchy’s(after all we need to blame someone for the sexual emotional castration we suffered. the female eunuch’s rant is forgiven.

The point being, your feminist blinkers are wasted in this instance. neither is a bad film justifiable just because you looked at it in a feminist frame, nor is your one size fis all “youre all patriarchal rapist dogs” style criticism meaningful in my, or the film’s context. i roundly reject your attemt to endow vishal bharadwaj or anybody else with majical powers, unless people make good film they will not be appreciated by the critic. give up the lame attempt of finding value outside of the actual text of the film.

@Ramesh – TRIFECTA!!!! Attaboy there! Well done! See, I had faith in you. In fact you exceeded it! I have to say I much prefer “the female eunuch” to the usual “feminist lesbian bitch” which is so Noughties, don’t you think?

1. The “one word dismissal” was not a failure to engage: it was a one sentence riposte to an asinine universal declaration about the nature of ageist romance on film that failed on three counts:
a. actual text – in the movie, Krishna is not looking to get laid. She’s using sex to achieve her means.
b. actual cast – Naseer might be old, but he’s definitely not OLD. (I’ll give you the benefit of this one – your commenting netiquette is so terrible, maybe you don’t know about the significance of capital letters on the internet)
c. actual issue – given the universality of the original comment, it was an attempt to remind you that reality strongly suggests otherwise.

Pardon me if I didn’t write it out in great detail as befitting a commenter of your status. I had the temerity to wonder if the Sixteen-yr-Old-Troll vibe of the comment was an indication of you having an off day and didn’t want to respond in like snide tone. Yes! I was actually trying to be nice. I wasn’t aware at the time you were a “patriarchal rapist dog” (I wouldn’t puff that around if I were you btw – as proud as you might be to be one, it’s not a nice thing to be).

2. Someone as committed to “unwavering” rules of the English language should know by now that we use quotes to denote actual words of the person quoted. Therefore, use of “vishal bharadwaj being no ordinary filmmmaker” is wrong besides being grammatically incorrect.

However, it’s true – I don’t think VB belongs to the Bollywood at Large crowd. I think he’s attempting to experiment within the Indian system and as such he has my admiration. He is also an excellent composer and from the days of Satya, he’s had a deft touch at dialogue. And I find his movies entertaining, which is a definite plus.

Just because you don’t like his work or because he’s not a modern day Truffaut, doesn’t mean his work is either worthless or “not atall deserving of all this analysis” (note: correct use of quotes). You’re welcome not to. The rest of us are free to do what we please. Including (horrors!) liking a movie that you don’t and analyzing it to hell and back.

3. Yes, Bollywood, Hindi cinema, Tamil, Malayalam, etc, are all examples of Indian cinema. Bollywood is a subset of Hindi cinema. All and each of these have their own conventions, their quirks and their markets. However, each of these is identifiable by a certain cultural similarity which is inevitable.

How does this prove that their grammar is static? So you don’t like Ishqiya – therefore it is impossible for audiences to see anything other than what you have detected in it? Who died and left you Ebert?

4. I didn’t find values outside of text – I based my theory (and it is a theory, not a certain fact, which is a cornerstone of all criticism unless the author himself is holding forth, in which case it is canon) on Khalu as per the structure of the film and the characters’ behavior. I didn’t say I looked at him and had a dream about him being impotent. Or that I once saw Naseer play an impotent character and his acting reminded me of the same here. It might help your cause considerably if you actually knew what you were talking about, you know. Verbosity can only take you thus far.

5. I am not a critic. I’m a film buff. As are most people on this site, including you unless you’re working for some publication I’m not aware of. However, all audiences when confronted by a series of visual images will read meaning into it. Each person’s take on this is unique, because it is a reflection of their taste, experiences and opinion.

You don’t have to agree with mine. I didn’t ask you to. I was having a conversation with BR and you poked your nose into it – in an uncouth manner.

I still held off. You upped the asshattery. You don’t want to have targets painted on your back, maybe you shouldn’t walk around with a bucket of paint and a sign begging for some kind stranger to do it for you. Just because Mommy didn’t breastfeed you or whatever your sad story is, doesn’t mean you get to be a dick with impunity.

Pity. This could have been an actual conversation. But for that to happen you’d have to be better than a snide asshole who’s a total FAIL in commenting skillz.

Being a Chennai-ite, who speaks Hindi well, I still lost a lot of humor while I was struggling hard to cope with the alien (to me) dialect 🙂 Overall, the movie worked well for me. But, I felt a void at many places and the way things unfolded didn’t get close to Kaminey.

Your reviews provide a varied and good perspective (on most occasions 🙂 ).

//Yes, these are colours and flavours we do not see or smell in the spit-shined urban multiplex movie, but how far in the other direction will we travel before beginning to demand that a film have more to it than just these colours and flavours?//

BTW a female eunuch has nothing to do with either lesbian or bitch…dunno what state feminist theory is , in India.

“1. The “one word dismissal” was not a failure to engage:”

liar.

“an asinine universal declaration ”

you matriarchal (you sound like my mother) rapist

” ageist romance ”

huh?! there was nothing ageist about the romance.

“Krishna is not looking to get laid. She’s using sex to achieve her means”

She is too. clear as blessed day to me.

“Naseer might be old, but he’s definitely not OLD”

your opinion. look at the film in the relevent scenes, when vidya balan comes on to him, you can see age, then exhustion and finally regret in his eyes, and you can see vidya respond to all three with a “Oh …ji” (like “you will do, really!”)

“I’ll give you the benefit of this one – your commenting netiquette is so terrible, maybe you don’t know about the significance of capital letters on the internet)”

and “Pardon me if I didn’t write it out in great detail as befitting a commenter of your status. I had the temerity to wonder if the Sixteen-yr-Old-Troll vibe of the comment was an indication of you having an off …etc”

yeah yeah shut the crap up you lesbian feminist bitch 😉

“Someone as committed to “unwavering” rules of the English language should know by now that we use quotes to denote actual words of the person quoted. Therefore, use of “vishal bharadwaj being no ordinary filmmmaker” is wrong besides being grammatically incorrect. ”

now we are moving from the irrelevnt to the seriously frivolous. the reason they employ you may be because of your copy editing skills, considering you suck at everythig else(ok that was unfair, youre opinionated and concieted but you are an efficient parrot of your learning) although I need not dazzle anyone with my compositional brilliance.

“However, it’s true – I don’t think VB belongs to the Bollywood at Large crowd”

I do I think hes as mainstream bollywood as they come.

“He is also an excellent composer and from the days of Satya, he’s had a deft touch at dialogue.”

I agree.

“Just because you don’t like his work or because he’s not a modern day Truffaut, doesn’t mean his work is either worthless or “not atall deserving of all this analysis” (note: correct use of quotes). You’re welcome not to. The rest of us are free to do what we please. Including (horrors!) liking a movie that you don’t and analyzing it to hell and back. ”

first I didnt like this movie and thought it wasnt worthy of analysis and said as much second, stop reelling against me Im not (or even old enough to be) your father. all this “just because you dont like I doesnt mean I shouldnt say it” crap is all something you dreamed up as a straw man to conduct and win your own argument without my participation.

“Bollywood is a subset of Hindi cinema.”

wrong. bollywood is indian cinema – tamil malayalam art commercial.

“How does this prove that their grammar is static? So you don’t like Ishqiya – therefore it is impossible for audiences to see anything other than what you have detected in it? Who died and left you Ebert?”

there you go again rebelling against me! dont you have a dad you can lash out at? hehe as regards grammar.It is (IMO- I have to say this or my adopted daughter will rebel again) NONEXISTENT AND ORGANICALLY DITERMINED by each filmmaker for himself. however, genre theory confirms that the discovered conventions are like strange attractor and are pretty much identifiable, and in indian cinema, even if say vishal bharadwaj strays from them sometimes(and he DIDNT in ishqiya(he did in Kaminay, when priyanka slept with shahid, but came running back, panting to them in the next scene when priyanka, all cuteness, like a matrimonial AD , went and seduced shahid into ma mamarrying her).

” I didn’t find values outside of text”

nope you did. there is NO indication in the script that naseer’s charecter was impotant, you brought your sixtyfour dollar(frigid lesbian bitch..was it?) dogma into this..isnt a castration fantasy a millitant feminist cornerstone?

” Verbosity can only take you thus far.”

daddy. not me.

” I am not a critic. I’m a film buff.”

IMO theres no difference.

“However, all audiences when confronted by a series of visual images will read meaning into it. Each person’s take on this is unique, because it is a reflection of their taste, experiences and opinion.

You don’t have to agree with mine. I didn’t ask you to.
”

I have no disagreement with this.

“I was having a conversation with BR and you poked your nose into it – in an uncouth manner. ”

you want to have a conversation with BR? pick up the phone or email him. hes a nice enough person . If you post in a comments section, be prepared to have to have your opinions examined. and dont cry “trifecta” when someone disagrees with you.Its like youre living the same argumen over repeatedly with people that you wouldnt listen to anything other than the familiar(trifecta) patterns.

“I still held off. You upped the asshattery. You don’t want to have targets painted on your back, maybe you shouldn’t walk around with a bucket of paint and a sign begging for some kind stranger to do it for you. Just because Mommy didn’t breastfeed you or whatever your sad story is, doesn’t mean you get to be a dick with impunity.”

Amrita/ramesh: Oh thank heavens. It was fun and all for a while to be at the sidelines and watch two extremely articulate opponents slug it out — but enough’s enough. I was going to ask you both to stand up on the bench and write “I will not fight in class” 50 times,” but I guess that’s not needed now 🙂

Future altercations, if needed, can continue at ramesh’s (per his instructions).

BR : I just wanted to say kudos and well done for letting the Ramesh/Amritha verbal battle to be on the page , in most forums those long(extremely long..) comments would have been rejected. Kudos again.

O dear, so much love for Ramu ? Why ? If its a Ramu film, its easy to guess that Rangan will go jan-gan-man again. Almost like a fanboy of Ramu! I wonder if you would write the same review if the film was by someone else. Dont make me hate you by revealing your taste in such dumb movies, misjudging and glorifying them. When did you join the Taran Adarsh n Nikhat Kazmi club. The Rangan i used to read was much different

In Tehelka review, Arul Mani has written….One weeps for what Varma has become. The man is so much in a hurry that he can neither texture his way to truth, nor tell you interesting lies. He must either make fewer films or none at all….so true!

“Ishqiya comes close to being all colour and flavour and little else.”
I have to completely disagree with you.Notwithstanding the plausible deniability built in this line by the very subjective nature of defining color, flavor and else , for me this movie worked on every level.
The script was sound with regard to plot, character development and conflict.The small sleights of hand of the director were just superb!

Loved your review. I came away with this inchoate feeling of discontent and it was good to read your view on why it didn’t work, which made sense to me. I felt that so many parts of the movie were good, but put together, it fell apart, like sort of wrongly constructed chemistry experiment.

VB : oh, absolutely – she didn’t work for me, though she tried hard. To some extent, the enigmatic bit seemed to work, but there were too many contradictions in her characterization. What’s with the Meerabai type of pose with the taanpura – that sort of classical background clashed hugely with her milieu. And how come a woman who cuts firewood and uses a choolha and has no cylinder, knows how to drive a omni van? The second half of the movie failed hugely.

@Amrita – I rather liked the Naseer as impotent, romantic troubadour – she definitely gave him first dibs and he seemed to find her physical intimacy uncomfortable.

@ ramesh – i read your posts upthread but – and this may surprise you – my post is really not about you or your blog. get a life, ‘swatisay. and if this post provokes you into a flame-war, well, you’ll have to have those jollies by yourself, since i don’t plan to reply to any of them.

For me, the color, the language, the sensousness of Krishna, the characters – everything worked , icing on the cake, The Babban-Krishna liplock , just honest to goodness lust,no subtext, no nothing. Why oh why we don’t have more of this ?

[…] have liked a couple more extreme close-ups). Film critic Baradwaj Rangan, perceptive as always, notes that Krishna is essentially an updated version of Jill (Claudia Cardinale) in Once Upon a Time in […]

[…] This is the link to the thread on Rangan’s site from which the posts of the two of us have been abstracted. This is Ms Rajan’s site, Amrita, please knock yourself out giving me advice on this thread. this is for you to vent spleen about my poor social skills and everything else you blamed your father for. […]